DOING WHAT’S NEXT

a Dharma talk by Josh Bartok

 

 

I’m going to draw in this talk from a few different sources. I’m also going to do something I don’t usually do, which is talk about a Zen koan, at least in part. Koans are the traditional teaching stories of Zen collected by ancient masters, often of Japanese and Chinese origin. They are engaged in a specific way in a context of koan study in our lineage. Koan study is different from reflecting on, listening to, and even exploring the meaning of koans. Koan training does a specific task. It helps you be able to move more fluidly between the realms of the absolute and the relative, or form and emptiness. In my experience what koan practice has done is to systematically detonate my ideas about what Zen is, what practice is, what wisdom is, what a teacher is and should be.

 

Another way of thinking about koans is that they are kind of, as one of my teachers calls them, “dragon speech.” In Buddhism, the dragons are the guardians of wisdom. The wisdom is in the form of a white pearl, and the dragons speak in an enlightened language that is often difficult for us to follow. People who are drawn to Zen have probably encountered some koan, whether it’s Joshu’s dog – does the dog have Buddha nature? – or the sound of one hand, or some of the more storyish koans, and have felt some resonance with them, maybe a shadow of an understanding of that dragon speech.

 

One of the best books of koans and commentaries to read, especially outside of the context of koan study, like on your own, is called The Iron Flute, with commentary by Nyogen Senzaki. Fabulous book, I recommend it. However, I’m not going to be talking from that today. I’m going to be talking about Case 7 from the Mumonkan (Wu-Men Kuan, in Chinese), or in English translation, the Gateless Gate.

 

A monk asked [Zen master] Joshu in all earnestness, “I have just entered this monastery. I beg you, Master, please give me instructions.”

Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice gruel yet?”

The monk answered, “Yes, I have.”

Joshu said, “Then wash your bowls.” The monk attained some realization.

 

I’m also going to read a little bit of the verse that is combined with this case.

 

Just because it is so clear

It takes us longer to realize it.

 

One of the things that we often emphasize in the Boundless Way Zen school, and in the Soto school generally, is that this is really it. This is it. Our life, this very body and mind is the body and mind of the Buddha. Buddhas aren’t special beings with special powers in them, and enlightenment isn’t a matter of attaining anything once and for all that you can hold onto and say this is it, this has now fixed all of my problems in my life. This has made everything perfect, everything makes sense. That doesn’t happen. One Zen teacher says that in Zen practice, problems don’t disappear from our lives, they disappear into our lives.

 

This is a koan that is related to ordinary mind. This is another aim that we often hear about in James Fords’ talks – ordinary mind is the way.

 

A monk asked Master Nansen (who is Joshu’s teacher, in fact), “What is the way?” Master Nansen said, “Ordinary mind is the way.”

 

Ordinary mind is one of those terms like shikantaza or just sitting that can somehow take on capital letters and become something extra-special. It can become Ordinary Mind, like it’s something to attain – but it’s not. Ordinary mind is ordinary mind. And it is precisely this. The thing that changes in Zen practice is that you gradually see that ordinary mind is the way but ordinary mind is also not quite what you thought it was. It isn’t as much of what you thought it was. There isn’t some other mind that you attain the way with. It’s just ordinary mind. There aren’t special enlightened thoughts that arise. But your whole relation to that ordinary mind, that ordinariness, to the thusness, changes.

 

I want to read a couple of excerpts from Koun Yamada’s commentary on this case. Koun Yamada died about 20 years ago. Despite having lived so recently, he is our great-great grandfather in the Dharma. He was James’ teacher’s teacher’s teacher. The whole Dharma ancestry is such a lovely thing. There’s a way that lineage like anything else in Zen can become precious and you can hold to it and think that it’s really special. But there’s also a way in which it’s fabulously, compassionately sweet. Miraculous, how generation after generation of people have studied Zen, realized for themselves the truth of the Dharma, seen clearly their own Buddha nature, seen clearly that liberation is possible right here, right now. For centuries and centuries - if you believe the myth, in an unbroken succession from Shakyamuni Buddha 2600 years ago - down through the generations have been passed the skillful means to help other people, to help us be able to see that and be freed from our suffering. Sometimes it brings tears to my eyes.

 

In addressing this ordinariness, “Have you eaten your gruel? Yes I have. Then wash your bowls,” on one level this is about just doing what’s next, doing what’s before you, doing what is here to be done by you without all of your stories of “if only” and “I like this” and “I don’t like this” and “I don’t have time for this” and “I can’t do that.” For me, sometimes doing tasks involves getting through almost a forcefield barrier that’s nowhere except in my own mind and resistance to my work, opening up the next manuscript to work on. That’s one side of the koan.

 

This is also a koan about getting over any ideas of what Zen is, especially of what your Zen realization is, whether it’s kensho, which is the word that we don’t often use but that is traditionally used for seeing one’s own true nature. It’s often a dramatic experience, sometimes it’s not. It’s also about getting over ideas of enlightenment or the enlightenment of your teachers, or even just starting to see smaller insights. There’s a way in which we can become attached to our insight, our kensho, our enlightenment, attached to the Dharma. This can then start to separate us from the truth of our life rather than bring us more intimately present with it. Addressing that, Koun Yamada says, with a traditional Japanese viewpoint:

 

 

"Drawing attention to one’s accomplishments is usually nauseating. This is especially true in Zen. When one first experiences enlightenment, one is apt [and I want to emphasize that this is true for all of us in any degree, in many ways] to feel more or less proud and perhaps become a little pompous."

 

We can feel more or less proud of our realization that life is suffering, that we all engage in sickness, old age, and death. We can become proud about seeing the ways in which we see that grasping, aversion and ignorance causes our own suffering and the suffering of others. We start saying, “You know what your problem is? It’s grasping and aversion! That’s your problem!” This is another form in which our pride and pomposity can manifest.

 

 

Yamada: "This is not completely unreasonable, because one has just experienced a world that unenlightened people could not even imagine. If that pride swells, however, one becomes afflicted with what is known as Zen sickness. It is manifested by certain esoteric mannerisms such as excessive use of Zen terms which people ordinarily don’t understand, or it may be apparent through boisterous laughter [or, I might add, through a forced veneer of serenity] as though one were completely free from all attachment, or by the flamboyant use of ironic or even sinful words. All this is most disgusting in a Zen person. It is therefore very important to wash away all the glamour of enlightment."

 

All the glamour of our ideas of enlightenment. All the glamour that we have or are still grasping for. That’s the other side that this koan is pointing to, that enlightenment is right here, enlightenment is eating your breakfast and then when you’ve done that, washing your bowls. And the thing about washing your bowls, and I’m sure you’ve all encountered this, is that they don’t stay washed. Tomorrow they’re back again, there’s more dishes each time you eat, each time you wash your bowls. It’s something that we see enacted vividly in oryoki, the formal ritual meal that we eat during sesshin. We have a special set of bowls we take out, and then as part of the meal we clean them up and put them away, tie them in their cloths and put them behind us.

 

Yamada again: "The truly great Zen person, one who has experienced deep enlightenment and has extinguished all delusory feelings after kensho should not be distinguishable from the ordinary person. Through Zen, one should become an ordinary person, a real person, not freakish, eccentric, or esoteric."

 

Zen practice is about becoming more ourselves, more who we really are, seeing that all of our ideas about ourselves and who we should be or who we wish we were or any concept about ourselves, that we’re so much more than that. And that it’s also no big deal because we’re also just this. Just this. Pointing to this just doing what comes next, this side of the koan, Yamada goes on to say:

 

"Reflect for a moment on the mechanics of movies. What you see on the screen is a continuously flowing movie consisting of a multitude of single images being projected on a screen. Each image is projected for an instant and covers the entire screen. The movie as a whole is a flowing continuity. In the same way, your life is the continuity of standing up, sitting down, laughing, sleeping, waking up, drinking, eating, and of course being born and dying. That is the continuity of our whole universe. That is what Joshu means when he says, “Wash your bowls.” I repeat, our life is nothing but the continuity of these actions, and they are nothing but the continuity of the whole universe."

 

One other thing that the movie analogy points to is that it’s only ever now. The only thing to do, whether it’s a situation with your life in a cosmic way or about the great problems of our environment or society or country or anything, is what’s there now. This moment is the only moment when you can ever do anything. This moment is the only moment when you can ever find freedom from suffering. This is the only moment in which you can free yourself from your own suffering. Not in the future, and not in the past. Even if you do, perhaps in the middle of a retreat, have a moment in which you have a sense of what freedom from suffering might actually be, then that moment passes and moves as all things do into the past and you’re still creating the new dirty dishes of this moment’s suffering. You have to be free now. There’s a way in which chains of thought go on and on and seem to get farther away, but they never actually go anywhere. It’s just thought after thought after thought. The beauty of zazen is that from any thought we can return directly, without any intermediary, without a process, to this, to right now, to this moment.

 

The first half of the verse is:

 

 

Just because it’s so clear

It takes us longer to realize it.

 

This is “clear” in many senses, but one of the senses is “transparent,” as in the chant of Hakuin’s Song of Zazen, “How bright and transparent the moonlight of wisdom.” It’s invisible because it’s clear, you’re looking at it and nothing is hidden, it’s right there. It’s your life. Taizan Maezumi Roshi, one of the great teachers of the 20th century, and I’ve quoted this often, says, “Appreciate your life. This is the essence of Zen.” The essence of  being. It’s so hard to see this, so hard to believe that this is it, so hard to believe we can be free from suffering amidst this. And that in fact even now our belief that we’re not free from suffering is just another erroneous and concretized believed thought, no more true than anything else that arises in our minds.

 

Yamada’s commentary says: "The fact is very simple, it is just as you see, just as you hear. There is no other secret, no other mystery, no other truth. But it is so simple that most people cannot appreciate the reality and tend to think there must be something deeper, something different."

 

Even if we only identify with the deeper and different aspect of our experience, maybe sometimes we feel like we’re experiencing something deeper, and then when we’re not experiencing that, we feel like we should be. But that isn’t better, that mystical experience, that special experience, that experience of calmness or spaciousness isn’t better than when our mind constricts.

 

As a counterpoint to all this Zen, I also want to read the brief text of this lovely little children’s storybook called Selma by Juta Bower. It’s about a sheep. It’s very brief.

 

When I just couldn’t take it anymore, I went to the wise ram [here we see a dog staring forlornly at a glass of red wine, being unable to take it anymore]. “What is happiness?” [he asked.] “Happiness? Let me tell you the story of a sheep named Selma.” Every morning at sunrise, Selma would eat the little grass, she would play with her children until lunchtime [here is Selma saying, “Baaa,” playing with her children], exercise in the afternoon, eat some more grass, have a little chat with Mrs. Miller in the evening [Mrs. Miller is a vulture. I like the idea of a vulture named Mrs. Miller. I want to get a pet vulture so I can name it Mrs. Miller.], and finally, fall fast asleep. Asked what she would do if she had more time, Selma replied, [and here is Selma being interviewed with a microphone, “What would you do if you had more time?”] “Well, I would eat a little grass at sunrise, play with my children until lunchtime, exercise in the afternoon, eat some more grass, have a little chat with Mrs. Miller in the evening, and finally, fall fast asleep.” “And if you won a million dollars?” she was asked. “Well, I would love to eat a little grass in the morning, play with my children, exercise in the afternoon, eat some more grass, and it would be so nice to have a chat with Mrs. Miller in the evening, before finally falling fast asleep.”

 

This is a parable, obviously, of appreciating your life. Also, as I’ve talked about before, part of what the character work of Zen is – Zen isn’t just about what we do on the cushion, it isn’t just about wisdom or insights. It’s about an endless refinement of character. Part of what that character work takes the form of is being the person you mean to be. Be the person that you mean to be. Live and appreciate the life you need to be living. This doesn’t mean, if only my desires were so simple that I could eat some grass. As many of you know, I edit books for Wisdom Publications. We make books on Buddhism. We get about ten letters a day from prisoners, asking us for free Dharma books, which we send them. It’s awesome, we have somebody for whom a large part of his job is sending books to prisoners. They all describe themselves using the word “indigent.” I don’t really know how that happens, perhaps they are somehow coached in the prison for the reason why they should be receiving books. But we send the books, and then we also hear back from them. We hear how grateful they are, in prison, often in maximum security prison in which they are locked 23 hours a day in their little cells, to have this opportunity to practice the Dharma, to practice being in their lives. There’s obviously nothing whatsoever appealing about the situation of prison. Without the Dharma, it’s a hell realm. But there’s a way to change the way you relate in your mind to that. Even in this hell realm, “Well, today I think I’ll wake up and look at the bars of my cell, do a little zazen, eat a little crappy food, listen to a little noise.” The potential is always there. It isn’t a matter of aligning the right set of external circumstances, of if-only’s, of anything being any more right or perfect than it is now.

 

This is one of the three marks of existence, a technical Buddhist term, called unsatisfactoriness. This is something I’m sure you’ve encountered. Nothing at all is ever as satisfying as you think it’s going to be. Nothing ever fully sates your wanting for something. Whatever it was that you looked forward to for so long, when you got it and then you found in fact that there were flaws with it, maybe the job wasn’t all you hoped, maybe the relationship is starting to go bad, or maybe it’s turning out to be more work than you thought, maybe there’s that next thing you want. You’re never going to be satisfied with anything at all. This is what we’re practicing with the stillness of zazen. We don’t seek that elusive just-right comfort. We practice connecting with that comfort beyond physical comfort. The way to be free from unsatisfactoriness is not to replace it with some kind of unchanging satisfaction, or worse still some kind of changing satisfaction, but to be beneath that realm of satisfactory and unsatisfactory.

 

I want to close by taking the entire other side of Zen’s approach to language. These are Mumon’s Zen Warnings. Mumon is the compiler of the Mumonkan, the Gateless Gate, and this is at the very end of it.

 

"To obey the rules and regulations is to tie yourself without a rope. To act freely and without restraint is heresy and deviltry. To be aware of the mind, making it pure and quiet, is the false Zen of silent contemplation. To arbitrarily ignore causal relations is to fall into a deep pit. To abide in absolute awakening with no darkening is to wear chains with a yoke, thinking of good and evil as being in heaven and hell. To have views about the Buddha and the Dharma is to be imprisoned inside two iron mountains. Becoming aware of consciousness at the instant it arises is toying with the soul. Practicing concentration in quiet sitting is an action of devils. If you go forward, you will go astray from the essence. If you go back, you oppose the principle. If you neither go forward nor back, you are a dead man breathing. Tell me now, what will you do? Make the utmost effort to attain full realization in this life. Do not abide in misery forever."

 

So that we don’t have to end on such difficulty, I’ll read you one more passage, from Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts):

 

"Thinking that you finally understand awakening will lull you into the deepest sleep of all. This very mind, this very mind which doesn’t understand awakening, is what we awaken to, this not understanding, this, our life just as it is."

 

Do please appreciate it.

 

Thank you everybody.